What are the legal liabilities for trademark infringement?

2017-07-19

一、Administrative Responsibility

For infringement of the exclusive right of a registered trademark, according to the regulation article 53 of the Trademark Law and the article 43 of the Implementation Rules of Trademark Law, the industry and commerce administration authorities may take the following measures to punishment:

(1) Order to stop the infringement. The specific measures are as follows:

① Order to stop selling immediately.

② Confiscate and destruct  the infringing goods

③ Confiscate and destruct the tools specially used for manufacturing infringing goods or counterfeiting registered trademarks.


(2) Imposed Fine Penalties

For having infringed the exclusive right of a registered trademark but has not yet constituted a crime, the industry and commerce administration authorities may punish them for not more than 50 percent of illegal turnover or less than five times the total profit of the infringement; The person who is directly responsible for the infringement unit may be fined up to RMB10, 000 according to the circumstances.


二、Civil Responsibility

According to article 118 of the General Provisions of the Civil Law, if the trademark right is infringed upon, it has the right to stop the infringement, eliminate the influence and compensate for the loss. According to article 53 of the trademark law, the infringer may be requested to stop the infringement act immediately and compensate for the loss by the infringed. Among them, the tort compensation is the infringer’s interests or the loss including the reasonable expenses to stop the infringement of the infringed during the period of infringement. If both of them are difficult to determine, the people's court shall judge less than RMB 500,000 as compensation for the infringed according to the circumstances of the infringement.


三、Criminal Responsibility 

In addition to the administrative liability and civil liability, infringement of trademark rights may also constitute a crime of counterfeiting registered trademark, selling commodities bearing counterfeit registered trademarks, illegal manufacturing registered trademark and selling the illegal manufacture of registered trademark.

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